Monday, January 14, 2013

In the deep night of the universescarcely contradicted by the streetlampsa lost gust of windhas offended the taciturn streetslike the trembling premonitionof the horrible dawn that prowlsthe ruined suburbs of the world.Curious about the shadowsand daunted by the threat of dawn,I recalled the dreadful conjectureof Schopenhauer and Berkeleywhich declares that the worldis a mental activity,a dream of souls,without foundation, purpose, weight or shape.And since ideasare not eternal like marblebut immortal like a forest or a river,the preceding doctrineassumed another form as the sun rose,and in the superstition of that hourwhen light like a climbing vinebegins to implicate the shadowed walls,my reason gave wayand sketched the following fancy:If things are void of substanceand if this teeming Buenos Airesis no more than a dreammade up by souls in a common act of magic,there is an instantwhen its existence is gravely endangeredand that is the shuddering instant of daybreak,when those who are dreaming of the world are fewand only the ones who have been up all night retain,ashen and barely outlined,the image of the streetsthat later others will define.The hour when the tenacious dream of liferuns the risk of being smashed to pieces,the hour when it would be easy for Godto level His whole handiwork!

But again the world has been spared.Light roams the streets inventing dirty colorsand with a certain remorsefor my complicity in the day’s rebirthI ask my house to exist,amazed and icy in the white lightas one bird halts the silenceand the spent nightstays on in the eyes of the blind.